I know this gets talked about quite a bit on the forum, but I couldn't find anything directly related to my questions.
A little bit of background, I have a system running as a ftp server. Right now it has 4 drives -- All are PATA, 2 300GB Data Drives in USB Enclosures, 1 400GB IDE Backup drive, 1 160GB Main Drive (OS Drive). I'm looking at a way to increase space while keeping things my data relativly safe, but also I want to keep things realitivley neat and simple. I don't want to just keep adding drives, and i don't want to be making backups to mulitples drives etc. I want something that in a year I can expand if needed, if I can clean up some of these external drives then all the better. I am a little tight in the budget area but am willing to put the extra work in now if it means smooth sailing 6 months down the road.
Here are a few options that I have looked at.
A NAS system, probably an Infrant ReadyNAS 600 in RAID 5. My problem with these is that they are expensive, close to $1500 Canadian for 1TB after all is said and done, plus I can't find anywhere locally that sells them (Or any other major NAS Product) which is a big deal for me.
Buy a Raid ATA Controller and setup a RAID 5 on 4 300GB IDE Drives. I am leaning towards this as I can take my 2 current 300GB Ide Drives, combine them with 2 more 300GB IDE Drives and I should come out with around 750GB+ after taking away the space required for RAID 5's overhead, which also means that I won't have to worry about a backup since the raid 5 should protect me if a drive fails, right??
Problem with this is that the only card I can pickup is a 6 channel raid 5 controller card, I don't mind this as it will give me room to expand but can I use a 6 channel card with only 4 drives (I image that I could but i don't know for sure). This option would probably run me about $900
My other option is to just build a new system with onboard raid/sata and i grab 2 500GB Sata Drives and mirror them, or just have one as a backup, like i do now, using syncback to copy files every night, and then boot up off of an ide drive. This would probably run me closer to $1500-$2000 depending.
So anybody have any comment or suggestions. I definatly do not need to use raid is someone has some other suggestion, it just seems to be the best tool for the job in this case. Drive access speed is not a huge factor data recovery, if a drive should die, is Number 1, it doesn't need to be an instant recovery, just so long as I can recover it period.
TIA,
James
A little bit of background, I have a system running as a ftp server. Right now it has 4 drives -- All are PATA, 2 300GB Data Drives in USB Enclosures, 1 400GB IDE Backup drive, 1 160GB Main Drive (OS Drive). I'm looking at a way to increase space while keeping things my data relativly safe, but also I want to keep things realitivley neat and simple. I don't want to just keep adding drives, and i don't want to be making backups to mulitples drives etc. I want something that in a year I can expand if needed, if I can clean up some of these external drives then all the better. I am a little tight in the budget area but am willing to put the extra work in now if it means smooth sailing 6 months down the road.
Here are a few options that I have looked at.
A NAS system, probably an Infrant ReadyNAS 600 in RAID 5. My problem with these is that they are expensive, close to $1500 Canadian for 1TB after all is said and done, plus I can't find anywhere locally that sells them (Or any other major NAS Product) which is a big deal for me.
Buy a Raid ATA Controller and setup a RAID 5 on 4 300GB IDE Drives. I am leaning towards this as I can take my 2 current 300GB Ide Drives, combine them with 2 more 300GB IDE Drives and I should come out with around 750GB+ after taking away the space required for RAID 5's overhead, which also means that I won't have to worry about a backup since the raid 5 should protect me if a drive fails, right??
Problem with this is that the only card I can pickup is a 6 channel raid 5 controller card, I don't mind this as it will give me room to expand but can I use a 6 channel card with only 4 drives (I image that I could but i don't know for sure). This option would probably run me about $900
My other option is to just build a new system with onboard raid/sata and i grab 2 500GB Sata Drives and mirror them, or just have one as a backup, like i do now, using syncback to copy files every night, and then boot up off of an ide drive. This would probably run me closer to $1500-$2000 depending.
So anybody have any comment or suggestions. I definatly do not need to use raid is someone has some other suggestion, it just seems to be the best tool for the job in this case. Drive access speed is not a huge factor data recovery, if a drive should die, is Number 1, it doesn't need to be an instant recovery, just so long as I can recover it period.
TIA,
James